Toto, we´re not in Kansas anymore.....

It´s 8:30 at night and five brave Projects Abroad volunteers are arriving at the bus station in Cochabamba. We had 10 hours ahead of us on a bus, which may sound horrible. However, this is not your average bus! These are semi-cama (half bed) buses. It was like nothing I´ve ever seen. Our seats basically reclined all the way into a full bed (see Alexa!) with a fold down foot rest to complete it. After a few rounds of "name a movie that starts with the last letter of the previous movie" we all slept like babies on our way to a little town called Potosí.


Potosí is not only the highest city in the world, but in the 1500s, it was also the biggest (population) and one of the richest, thanks to the Cerro Rico (rich mountain). The heart and soul of Potosí is silver mining and although it is becoming harder and harder to extract silver, the miners still work everyday (almost, you´ll see).


So we arrived at 7:15am on Saturday and headed to a hostel that was recommended to us: The Koala Den. We set ourselves up for a room that night and began thinking about breakfast when the hostel manager asked if we were going into the mines. We were planning to go Sunday, but it turned out they were pretty much closed the next day so we had to go today. So we opted for the afternoon since we still had to eat and aclimate ourselves to the altitude. But alas, we were told that was no good either. The morning was going to be much better because.....it was the once a year festival of llama sacrificing and in the afternoon all the miners would be drunk and crazy. This was one of their few days off each year and we just happened to be there!! So, the tour left at 8:00am which meant we had about 20 minutes to change clothes, eat, and get out the door.

So the first strange and hilarious thing was our "protective clothing". We got to wear bright orange balloon pants, a silver jacket, wellington boots, and our favorite hard hats and head lamps. We looked ridiculous! Then we went to the miners market. Here they sold sticks of dynomite, beer, hard hats, and coca leaves.... you know all the necessities for working in the mines :) So we bought some presents to give to the miners and walked around the market a bit.... remember we are already wearing our "protective clothing". Yes, we got stared at.

So then, up the hill to the mines. We stopped for a photo op. and guess what?! Potosí has a revolving restaurant shaped like the Space Needle too! Except it is green... crazy. We got to the opening of a mine just in time to see the second llama sacrifice. Men held down the llama while another slit its throat and others collected the brilliantly colored blood and splattered it on the opening to the mine, the doors around the opening and painted our faces with it (Holly, Peter, and I in protective clothing with llama blood). We got to see two more sacrifices as we stood lining a tiny little ally, about a foot away from all this.

Then we went into the mine. It was more of the same from last weekend. Crawling around on hands and knees, squeezing through tight spaces, climbing up rock faces. Although this time, we couldn´t breathe at all due to both the dust and the intense altitude. After about 3 minutes of walking, we stopped for 20 and our guide told us about the mines. It was a really crazy feeling to be so out of breath so fast. When we returned to the celebration grounds, the llamas had been skinned and parted so the women could start cooking them for the dinner feast. The sacrifice is the town´s way of giving blood to mother earth she she won´t take the miners when they are working in the mines. We then had to join the miners drinking beer, 96 percent alcohol drinks, listening to accordian music, and celebrating their day off! It was bazaar. But to top it all off, they lit of a bunch of dynomite just for fun. It was hilarious to see the guy run down into a valley, leave the dynomite and run as fast as he could back out.

When we got back to the town, we were hungry so we went for a traditional meal of... yes, llama meat! It was pretty good. And at this point we still had dried llama blood on our faces :) After cleaning up, we went to the Mint, where they used to make coins for Bolivia. Of yah, I also forgot that is was sooooo cold in Potosí. And some of the rooms in the mint were even colder than outside. It was pretty neat to see all the old coins, fancy rooms, and intricate machines used to make money. Needless to say, we were exhausted afterwards and headed off to bed.

Day two: we rented mountain bikes (slightly sketchy, but they did work) and biked about 2 hours to a huge thermal bath (behind us in the picture). It was a tough bike, again because of the altitude, but when we got to jump into the warm water at the end, it was definitly worth it! We swam around for awhile while our guide made lunch... more llama! There were some amazing views on the way there too. We did get to pass a few packs of llamas on the road!

Dinner and another night bus found us again in Cochabamba. Wehw! What a weekend.